Army chief of staff says U.S. may need more troops in Iraq

Source: Washington Post

By Craig Whitlock September 19 at 12:55 PM

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said Friday it might be necessary to deploy more U.S. forces to Iraq beyond the 1,600 troops already there, warning that the fight against the Islamic State will intensify and could go on for years. Odierno, who served as the top U.S. military commander during the last war in Iraq, also said he would not rule out the need to send small numbers of U.S. ground troops into combat as tactical airstrike spotters or as front-line advisers embedded with Iraq forces. In a breakfast interview with the Defense Writers Group, Odierno said that “1,600 is a good start” and that “I don’t think there’s a rush, a rush to have lots of people in there now.” But he predicated that as operations accelerate against jihadist fighters from the Islamic State, military commanders will revisit U.S. troop levels. “Based on that assessment, we’ll make further decisions,” he said.

President Obama has authorized the deployment of the 1,600 U.S. troops in several stages since June, most recently on Sept. 10, when he sent an additional 475 personnel to Iraq. Most serve as advisers to Iraqi and Kurdish forces or as security for the U.S. Embassy and the international airport in Baghdad. While Obama has repeatedly insisted he will not send U.S. ground forces into combat in Iraq, he has not indicated whether he thinks more troops will be necessary in the coming months to carry out his strategy against the Islamic State. Any recommendations from military commanders to send more troops to Iraq would have to receive the endorsement of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel before going to the White House for final approval.

Asked if Hagel was open to the idea of deploying more troops, his spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said in an e-mail: “The Secretary is — and will remain — open to hearing the advice and counsel of senior military leaders. He expects that advice to be candid, forthright and forward-looking.”
Thousands of U.S. troops are stationed at bases in nearby Persian Gulf countries, from which they are carrying out a campaign of airstrikes and surveillance missions targeting the Islamic State, a group that has seized large parts of territory in Iraq and Syria.

In his interview, Odierno said the fight against the Islamic State will become more difficult as Iraqi and Kurdish forces, with the help of U.S. air power and advisers, go on the offensive and try to retake territory.

“This is going to go on,” he said. “This is not a short term — I think the president said three years. I agree with that — three years, maybe longer. And so what we want to do is do this right. Assess it properly, see how it’s going, adjust as we go along, to make sure we can sustain this.”

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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/army-chief-of-staff-says-us-may-need-more-troops-in-iraq/2014/09/19/63917a0c-400e-11e4-b03f-de718edeb92f_story.html

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DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN...and it's coming from the Army Chief